It’s not often the viola gets the spotlight. The alto voice in the string family is most often used to provide harmonic underpinnings and rhythmic structure while other instruments get the showy, hummable passages. But Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon maintains the viola is a virtuosic instrument in its own right that deserves to be […]
Live in Studio C: Felix Wang and Heather Conner
Listen / This week, we welcomed back a longtime friend and met a new one as cellist Felix Wang returned to Live in Studio C with one of the newest faculty members at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, pianist Heather Conner. The pair will perform a concert on March 26 in Blair’s Turner Recital Hall.
Violinist Joshua Bell Brings An Orchestra Of Partners To The Schermerhorn
Joshua Bell is a very busy man. The violinist plays roughly 100 dates a year as a visiting soloist with orchestras around the world. But increasingly, he’s finding a home on the road in the other 30 to 40 concerts he performs with a venerable British chamber orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The Academy […]
Marvin Gaye Meets The Middle Ages At chatterbird’s Next Nashville Concert
One of Nashville’s newest performing ensembles is redefining the pops concert. Promotional materials for chatterbird’s Thursday night show prompt audience members to bring sheep noisemakers (if you happen to have such a thing) and references New Wave keyboards, improvisational pygmy singing and Wendy Carlos. Among the list of pieces chatterbird will perform are two from […]
Nashville Opera Announces Plans For Classics, New Music and New York Performances
A pair of time-tested audience favorites, Don Giovanni and Carmen, will anchor the Nashville Opera’s 2015-16 season. But between the mainstage bookends of Mozart and Bizet, the other half of the season is made up of the kind of newer works that are putting the company on the national map. The story of the longest-held […]
Live in Studio C: John Johns
Listen / After more than four decades on the faculty at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, guitarist John Johns is retiring. He’ll give his last recital as a teaching musician at 8pm this Thursday in Ingram Hall. But first, he returned to Studio C (by the way, he was our very first guest artist back […]
Live in Studio C: Carolyn Huebl and Mark Wait
Listen / Johannes Brahms published three sonatas for the pairing of piano and violin, and next Tuesday Carolyn Huebl and Mark Wait will play them all in an 8pm concert at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music. They’ve brought one for a live performance in Studio C, marked by conversational passages between the two instruments.
Longtime Nashville Children’s Theatre Director Scot Copeland, 62, Dies Suddenly
The man who led the Nashville Children’s Theater for the last three decades has died. Scot Copeland passed away suddenly overnight. As a teen, Copeland co-founded a children’s theater in a small Alabama town. He went on to devote his entire career to producing plays for young audiences, saying he enjoyed how willing children were […]
Social History Told Via Song (And Elaborate Costumes) As Taylor Mac Comes To Nashville
Taylor Mac bills his current touring show as a “history of popular music,” terminology that might suggest a lecture or at least a dry, academic concert. In fact, what he’s scheduled to create this weekend at OZ Arts Nashville is a sort of Technicolor performance-art cabaret, layering humor and music over a well-researched structure. Mac’s […]
Live in Studio C: Blair String Quartet
Listen / The Blair String Quartet has long deserved a reputation as one of Nashville’s finest performing ensembles, with roots stretching back more than four decades.
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